In April 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced the completion status of the 10-Gigabit optical network pilot projects: 136 projects across residential communities, factories, and parks nationwide passed the review, completing the established pilot tasks. This pilot, which lasted for over a year, has transformed the 10-Gigabit optical network from a concept in standard documents and press conferences into a practical, acceptable, and evaluable live network engineering practice. The completion of the pilot tasks marks the transition of the 10-Gigabit optical network from a technical concept to reality; however, issues such as its value proposition, scenario adaptation, and commercialization pace still require further clarification.
This article analyzes the industrial progress, enabling scenarios, and future trends of the 10-Gigabit optical network. Simply put, the 10-Gigabit optical network is a fixed network that provides users with 10-Gigabit (10 Gbit/s) access capabilities: based on 50G PON (passive optical network) as the access foundation, overlaid with FTTR (fiber to the room), Wi-Fi 7, and high-speed backbone transmission, it achieves end-to-end 10-Gigabit capabilities from the backbone network to the room terminals. It is not a simple multiplication of the technical indicators of the Gigabit optical network by ten, but a systematic upgrade in bandwidth, latency, reliability, and determinism.
"Gigabit" Has Become the Mainstream: Why the Rise of "10-Gigabit"?
By the end of June 2026, the total number of fixed internet broadband access users in China reached 701 million, of which 258 million were users with Gigabit and above rates, accounting for 36.8%; FTTR users exceeded 60 million; the number of 10G PON ports capable of providing Gigabit network services reached 32.86 million. Putting these different figures together, the conclusion is clear: the "Gigabit popularization" game is basically over, with nearly one in three broadband users now using the Gigabit optical network.
It should be pointed out that the "sufficiency" of the Gigabit network mainly targets current daily consumption scenarios; when the 10-Gigabit optical network will arrive depends on the specific assessment of the boundaries of Gigabit capabilities. From the perspective of network capabilities, the Gigabit optical network still has some shortcomings. First, upstream capacity is limited. Domestically, XG-PON asymmetric technology is widely used, and the upstream bandwidth of operators' Gigabit home packages is generally only tens of megabits, which is difficult to meet the needs of high-upstream scenarios such as live streaming e-commerce, machine vision backhaul, cloud NAS (network-attached storage), and surveillance video aggregation. Second, deterministic guarantees are insufficient. The Gigabit network can achieve "average rate compliance," but cannot guarantee the upper limits of latency and jitter, making it difficult to meet the requirements of sensitive business scenarios such as industrial control and remote collaboration. Third, the experience is discounted after entering the home. The Gigabit rate reaches the optical modem, but after passing through wall-penetrating Wi-Fi to the terminal, it often leaves only over a hundred megabits, resulting in severe bandwidth loss in the "last ten meters" scenario.
Upgrades on the demand side are also continuing to accelerate. 8K ultra-high definition, cloud gaming, and XR terminals are gradually being deployed at scale, AI applications are moving from pilot trials to daily use, the resolution of industrial quality inspection cameras is rapidly iterating from 2K to 4K and 8K, and computing power continues to migrate to the cloud and edge. The accumulation of bandwidth, latency, and reliability requirements for the above businesses can no longer be met through "partial optimization of the Gigabit network."
The rhythm of policy and industrial development resonate with each other. In 2023, Beijing took the lead in releasing the "Action Plan for 'Optical Network Capital, 10-Gigabit City' (2023-2025)"; since 2024, more than ten provinces and cities including Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Hainan have successively introduced special policies for the 10-Gigabit optical network.
In January 2025, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Pilot Work of 10-Gigabit Optical Network," clearly stating that by the end of 2025, pilots would focus on three types of scenarios: residential communities, factories, and parks; in April, 168 shortlisted pilot projects were announced, covering 86 cities in 30 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) across the country, including 67 10-Gigabit communities, 52 10-Gigabit factories, and 49 10-Gigabit parks. As of April 2026, 136 10-Gigabit optical network pilot projects have passed acceptance, and typical business scenarios such as cloud computers, cloud gaming, industrial optical quality inspection, "AI + ultra-high-definition video surveillance," cloud model training and inference, and integrated sensing and communication have completed landing verification. From policy texts to the acceptance list, the 10-Gigabit optical network has completed the critical stage from technical verification to deployment and application in just over a year.
Technical Foundation: The Capability Leap of 50G PON
The core enabling technology of the 10-Gigabit optical network is 50G PON. In 2018, the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector) initiated the research on the next-generation high-speed PON standard (G.HSP); in 2019, the overall requirement standard G.9804.1 was officially released; in 2021, the first version of the series of standards was released, completing the standardization of basic functions; the supplementary standards released in 2022 further clarified the specifications of symmetric 50G PON technology and the coexistence characteristics of three generations of PON. Domestically, the 50G PON series of industry standards by the CCSA (China Communications Standards Association) were basically completed in 2024. The prior unification of the standard system allows equipment vendors, chip manufacturers, and operators to collaboratively promote implementation under the same technical framework.
From the perspective of indicators, the single-wavelength downstream rate of 50G PON is 49.7664 Gbit/s, and the upstream supports two optional tiers of 25 Gbit/s and 50 Gbit/s, with a bandwidth capacity about 5 times that of 10G PON; it can support a 1:64 split ratio and a transmission distance of over 20 kilometers, with optical power budgets covering N1 (29 dB) and C+ (32 dB) levels. Among the above information, the feature that is most easily overlooked but crucial for smooth live network deployment is precisely "three-generation coexistence"—the upstream wavelength of 50G PON converges at 1286 nm±2 nm, which can share the same set of ODN (optical distribution network) with the live network GPON and 10G PON. In other words, operators deploying the 10-Gigabit optical network do not need to re-pipe and lay drop cables or replace splitters; they only need to add a new service board at the central office and replace a 10-Gigabit terminal on the user side to complete the 10-Gigabit capability upgrade, significantly reducing the transformation costs for operators' network generational evolution.
The realization of the 10-Gigabit experience cannot be accomplished independently by a single link in the access network. In the pilot notice, the MIIT deployed four tasks simultaneously: 50G PON ultra-broadband optical access, FTTH/FTTR and Wi-Fi 7 collaboration, high-speed large-capacity optical transmission, and deep integration of optical networks and AI. This deployment itself is a clear signal: FTTR extends optical fiber to the room, solving the coverage shortcoming of the "last ten meters"; Wi-Fi 7 breaks through the air interface rate bottleneck on the terminal side; 400G backbone transmission ensures that the metropolitan and backbone networks do not become congested; and AI empowers network O&M and precise business identification. The lack of any link will result in a discounted measured rate at the user end.
Looking globally, more than 30 operators have successively released 50G PON showcase sites, but only China has elevated the 10-Gigabit optical network to a national special pilot task and clearly defined acceptance indicators according to the three types of scenarios: "communities, factories, and parks." China's industrial role in the optical access field has completed the leap from following to leading—the large-scale deployment experience accumulated during the 10G PON stage is now being transformed into international standard discourse power and whole industry chain coordination advantages in the 50G PON era.
The pilot acceptance goals are equally convincing. The acceptance threshold for "10-Gigabit communities" clearly requires that some users within the pilot community use home broadband packages of 5000 Mbit/s and above, and the upstream access rate is not lower than 1000 Mbit/s—formally including upstream indicators in the pilot requirements, which is relatively rare in previous broadband popularization standards, directly addressing the pain point of limited upstream bandwidth in the Gigabit era. From publicly available measured data, the speed test result of Beijing's first 10-Gigabit home broadband user in September 2024 was 9340 Mbit/s downstream and 6311 Mbit/s upstream, and the end-to-end full-link transmission capability has indeed stepped onto the "10-Gigabit" level.
The Pilot Answers for Three Types of Scenarios
10-Gigabit Communities: The path for experience upgrade is clear, but rigid demand needs to be cultivated. The home scenario is the landing entry closest to ordinary users for the 10-Gigabit optical network. Multi-channel 8K video concurrency, cloud computers, cloud gaming, naked-eye 3D, and home security and health monitoring based on optical sensing have all been included in the typical business list of pilot communities. Paired with FTTR all-optical networking and Wi-Fi 7, after 10-Gigabit access enters the home, it can stably support more than 20 smart terminals running at full speed simultaneously, and the end-to-end operation latency of cloud gaming is only at the millisecond level.
However, calmly examining from an industrial perspective, 10-Gigabit applications on the home side currently look more like an "experience upgrade" rather than a "rigid demand switch"—the existing Gigabit broadband can already cover the vast majority of daily application scenarios, and the willingness of users to pay for 5000-Megabit or even 10-Gigabit packages still needs to be tested by the market. The true large-scale growth of 10-Gigabit home users will most likely have to wait until "bandwidth-guzzling" applications such as cloud computers and AI home assistants mature and become popular.
10-Gigabit Factories: Upstream bandwidth and deterministic latency are hard indicators. The industrial scenario is the one with the most solid demand among the three types of 10-Gigabit pilots. A single high-definition industrial quality inspection camera can generate several GB of raw data per minute. When multiple cameras upload concurrently, the upstream bandwidth of the Gigabit network will quickly reach the capacity limit; while AGV scheduling and high-precision motion control businesses have strict requirements for end-to-end latency and jitter.
China Unicom has completed the 50G PON industrial scenario pilot verification in Xiangyang, Hubei; the 10-Gigabit factory project of Xinjiang Xinye Nenghua was jointly implemented by the local telecommunications and Unicom, completing the integrated verification of 50G PON ultra-broadband access, industrial PON, and industrial optical bus under the same network architecture, aiming to cover key production links such as high-definition industrial quality inspection and intelligent warehousing. Industrial optical quality inspection was included in the MIIT's 10-Gigabit pilot acceptance report, indicating that this technical landing path has become a demonstration model. From a longer-term perspective, the industrial optical network is expected to replace traditional industrial Ethernet in some scenarios—optical fiber naturally has anti-electromagnetic interference capabilities and an extremely high bandwidth capacity limit, adapting to special operating environments such as high temperature and strong electromagnetic interference, which is also the core value of the 10-Gigabit factory.
10-Gigabit Parks: Upgrading from basic office networks to computing power entrances. The business demands in park scenarios are the most diverse, including typical application scenarios such as high-density centralized office work, campus virtual training, high-definition medical image retrieval in hospitals, and high-bitrate streaming in live streaming bases. The country's first 10-Gigabit village live streaming base in Pinggu, Beijing, is a highly representative landing case—officially landed in June 2024, relying on the 10-Gigabit network to support high-bitrate streaming and ultra-low latency interaction for agricultural product live streaming. The 10-Gigabit optical network pilot notice requires parks to explore capabilities such as sinking OTN (optical transport network) nodes to access equipment rooms, connecting network exits to high-speed OTN dedicated lines, lossless transmission, and integrated sensing and communication. This essentially positions the 10-Gigabit park as a "high-quality computing access interface" rather than just a faster office network.
Notably, there is a hidden main line of computing power and AI. The 10-Gigabit pilot acceptance report specifically included "model training and inference applications" in the typical landing cases. This move marks that the core value of the 10-Gigabit optical network is shifting from "transmitting data" to "delivering computing power": designers call cloud rendering resources on lightweight terminals, small and medium-sized enterprises can purchase cloud GPU (graphics processing unit) computing power on demand through 10-Gigabit optical network access, and edge nodes and central clouds achieve low-latency collaborative inference. AI applications are much more sensitive to upstream bandwidth and latency than traditional internet businesses, which may be the real driving variable for the 10-Gigabit optical network to change from an "optional upgrade" to a "mandatory foundation."
China Unicom's Layout and Practice
Operators are the main bodies of 10-Gigabit optical network construction. Taking China Unicom as an example, its promotion path for the 10-Gigabit optical network is roughly a three-step approach: "setting the direction at the group level—landing pilot projects at the provincial branch level—joint debugging with the upstream and downstream of the industry chain."
At the level of technical research and standard formulation, China Unicom has undertaken national key R&D projects to carry out 50G PON technical research since 2021, participating in the formulation of relevant international and industry standards by ITU-T and CCSA; in 2022, it jointly released the "F5G Advanced Industry White Paper" with industry chain partners, officially establishing the industrial consensus of 50G PON as the key access technology for the 10-Gigabit optical network; subsequently, it released the "China Unicom 50G PON Park Application Scenario White Paper 1.0," systematically sorting out the business demands of seven typical park scenarios including smart classrooms, smart offices, smart industry, all-optical hospitals, live streaming bases, smart cultural tourism, and smart transportation, and proposing deployment suggestions; recently, the China Unicom Research Institute also proposed the idea of empowering 10-Gigabit optical access with AI, promoting the transformation of home broadband services from "one size fits all" network speed selling to "tailored for each individual" experience guarantee.
At the level of technical verification, in 2023, Beijing Unicom built the F5G-A 10-Gigabit optical network innovation laboratory, completing the coexistence verification of 50G PON and 10G EPON in the live network, as well as the verification of 10-Gigabit services for enterprises; China Unicom also jointly landed the country's first 50G Combo PON live network pilot with FiberHome, completing the compatibility verification of the previous generation OLT service boards and live network terminals. The transition of three-generation PON coexistence from standard provisions to live network landing requires the continuous carrying out of such preliminary verification work.
At the level of live network promotion, in May 2024, Beijing Unicom took the lead nationwide in releasing the F5G-A 50G PON 10-Gigabit experience evaluation report, and launched the trial commercialization of 10-Gigabit home broadband packages in September of the same year; by the middle of 2025, its 10-Gigabit broadband access capability had covered nearly 5,000 communities across the city, with a coverage ratio of over 50%. Among the 168 pilot projects publicized by the MIIT, Liaoning Unicom had 5 projects shortlisted (4 10-Gigabit communities and 1 10-Gigabit park), and 10-Gigabit park projects in Jiading, Shanghai, and Binxi Economic Development Zone, Harbin, were also successively landed; in the 2026 10-Gigabit optical network pilot project acceptance, two projects of Hunan Unicom entered the completion list, and subsequently officially released the 10-Gigabit optical network ecological construction results in May 2026, launching the construction of provincial 10-Gigabit benchmark business halls.
Placing China Unicom's landing actions into the industry coordinates for review, the common choices of operators can be found: to B (to business) and park scenarios are landed first, followed by the home consumer market. The formation of this promotion sequence is not accidental—parks and factories have clear paying entities and rigid demands, while the sustainable paying business model for 10-Gigabit optical network home packages is still being explored. For operators, the 10-Gigabit optical network at this stage is more like a capability reserve for high-value scenarios rather than a universal service rolled out comprehensively.
Trends and Reflections
First, the conclusion of the pilot does not equal large-scale commercialization. The industry generally expects that in 2026, the domestic shipment volume of 50G PON equipment will exceed 500,000 ports, entering the "commercialization launch" stage, and it will not enter the large-scale deployment cycle until around 2028. The overall promotion rhythm will continue the idea of "first to B, then to H (to home)": commercial promotion will be carried out first in scenarios with clear demands such as parks, factories, and live streaming bases, while the home market will gradually penetrate and land with the reduction of terminal costs and the maturity of the application ecosystem.
Second, the 10-Gigabit optical network will be deeply bound with the computing power network. With the advancement of the "East Data and West Computing" project and the sinking of edge computing power nodes, the connection quality between the user-side access network and computing power nodes will directly determine the user experience of various applications on the cloud. New network architectures such as 10-Gigabit cloud access, OTN high-quality dedicated lines entering parks, and cloudified broadband core networks essentially point to the same goal: making computing power like basic public resources such as water and electricity, readily available on demand.
Third, the 10-Gigabit optical network will inevitably evolve towards an autonomous network, and at the same time, it must also take into account the requirement of low energy consumption. The O&M complexity of the 10-Gigabit network rises synchronously with the access rate. Introducing AI capabilities to achieve fault prediction and automatic system optimization is already a clear direction for industrial upgrading; at the same time, the operating power consumption of 50G PON equipment needs to be continuously reduced through technical means such as optical device integration and intelligent port sleep, otherwise the power cost after the large-scale deployment of the 10-Gigabit optical network will become a severe challenge.
In addition, the industry must also face up to several realistic constraints of the 10-Gigabit optical network. First, cost constraints: currently, the prices of 50G PON optical modules and terminals are still several times higher than those of 10G PON, and the prices of optical devices with high power budget levels are particularly prominent; the cost reduction of the industry chain still needs to be fed back by scale effects. Second, business model constraints: the room for improvement in household broadband ARPU (average revenue per user) is limited, and it is unrealistic to hope for large-scale price increases for 10-Gigabit packages; the investment in the 10-Gigabit optical network needs to be balanced more by to B businesses and computing-network integration revenue. Third, application ecosystem constraints: the typical application list in this pilot acceptance report is still dominated by cloud computers, industrial optical quality inspection, and high-definition video surveillance. There are not many native applications that truly belong to the 10-Gigabit era, and the situation of "the road waiting for cars" will continue for some time. Fourth, O&M and security constraints: the larger the bandwidth, the greater the impact range of a single fault, and the requirements for the O&M system and network security capabilities are also rising accordingly.
Overall, the 10-Gigabit optical network has completed the critical leap from standard formulation, technical verification to pilot landing, but the industrialization process has just opened the curtain. In the next two or three years, the industry focus will not be on who updates the rate indicators higher, but on who can first transform the technical value of the 10-Gigabit optical network into real money orders in factory, park, and computing access scenarios, and make up for the application shortcomings in the home market. As the generational evolution direction of the access network, the industrial certainty of the 10-Gigabit optical network has basically reached a consensus; the speed of its large-scale commercialization depends on whether the market entities in every link of the industry chain can clearly calculate their own return on investment.
This article is published in the 9th issue of "Communications World" in 2026; original title: "Industrial Progress, Enabling Scenarios, and Future Trends of the 10-Gigabit Optical Network."
Authors: Sun Yue, Wang Zelin, Shao Yan, China Unicom Research Institute